


Breakup

by sigo



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Anal Sex, Armitage Hux Has Feelings, Armitage Hux Has Issues, Armitage Hux Smokes, Assassination Attempt(s), Breaking Up & Making Up, Darth Tantrum and his Evil Space Ginger, Idiots in Love, Kylo Ren Angst, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Kylo Ren Smokes, M/M, Makeup, Makeup Sex, Marking, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Smoking, They don't stay broken up this isn't full angst, it's just IDIOTS, these fucking idiots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:34:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26304970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sigo/pseuds/sigo
Summary: Kylo crawled into the double bed they shared, they HAD shared, with his clothes on. Hux would reprimand him for it if Hux were here. 'Your cloak is filthy, Ren. Get it off my clean sheets.' Hux was down on Starkiller Base instead, newly arrived and planning to stay there as construction was finished, stationed aboard the weapon he’d designed until it was functional. No doubt he’d chosen this exact moment to make things easier on himself. How long had Hux been planning this? Had he lain next to Kylo in this bed, smoking and tapping away at his datapad far after he’d clocked out, and planned all along for his descent onto the base to coincide with the cutting of this tie?
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Comments: 14
Kudos: 107





	Breakup

Kylo knew he wouldn’t find Hux in the General’s quarters tonight. He did not know he would find a note. It was on the bed, the one place where Kylo wouldn’t miss it, weighed down with a pack of Naboo Blues. Kylo sat on the bed, reading it over and over, not able to believe it. He got up and went into the refresher and splashed cold water on his face and then returned. He wiped his hands dry painstakingly on his robes -- it was a paper note. One of Kylo’s calligraphy papers. The note was written in real ink, with none of the finesse of Kylo’s practiced hand. Hux’s handwriting was atrocious. Of course it was, he didn’t need to write. That was what made this time real: the fact that Hux had committed it to paper. It would be much more like him to send a comm. Hells, maybe a calendar event. ‘Breakup, required personnel: Kylo Ren.’ But Kylo usually ignored electronic messages from everyone except Snoke. Kylo read the ones he got from Hux, of course, but he never responded. Perhaps Hux thought Kylo would try to pretend he’d never received this message and continue on like nothing had changed. Kylo had done it with Hux’s every threat before, to great success.

The paper, and Hux’s absence, made pretending impossible. It was devoid of warmth, the note. Not that that was unexpected. Words like ‘love’ never passed Hux’s lips. But not even a ‘good luck’? No request that Kylo take care of himself? He’d heard that one come out of Hux’s mouth, before he left on particularly dicey missions. No such sentiment was contained in the note. It didn’t even say why, just that _this is for the best_. Kylo went to Hux’s conservator and helped himself to the jug of blue milk inside. When he tried to pour it his hands shook and he knocked the cup over. It was plastic, thankfully, and so it didn’t shatter, but blue milk sprayed the cabinets and glugged out over the counter and floor. Kylo kept thinking that this was a joke, but that didn’t fit. Hux wasn’t a joker.

Kylo hadn’t seen this coming. Sure, they had their fights. Real nasty blood-boiling ones and sometimes they got more personal than they should. But didn’t they more than make up for them in privacy? It was only natural when your co-commander was your...Kylo’s mind skipped over the word, filling it in with a pulse of feeling. There was no word that fit snugly over he and Hux’s relationship. Kylo thought back over the last months, standing frozen in Hux’s kitchenette with blue milk beaded up on his boots. He couldn’t find a sign that they’d been headed here. Maybe that made him just as stupid and insensitive as Hux had accused him of being over the last five years since they’d been shoved together and then tusseled, rolled around, and shoved themselves closer.

When he came to his senses he called Hux’s comms unit. He almost expected it to ring on unanswered until he was prompted to leave a message, but Hux picked up on the second ring just as he always had. He had limited the call to audio.

“General Hux.”

Hux’s voice sounded mild, neutral. Kylo licked his lips. His mouth felt very dry. Hux never answered his calls like that. He was more likely to get a snide _What do you want, Ren?_

“Hux,” he said, and the thickness of his voice alerted Hux to his state.

“Don’t call back unless you have something to report,” Hux snapped, and hung up.

Kylo crawled into the double bed they shared, they _had_ shared, with his clothes on, only pausing to kick off his milk-stained boots. Hux would reprimand him for it if Hux were here. _Your cloak is filthy, Ren. Get it off my clean sheets._ Hux was down on Starkiller Base instead, newly arrived and planning to stay there as construction was finished, stationed aboard the weapon he’d designed until it was functional. No doubt he’d chosen this exact moment to make things easier on himself. How long had Hux been planning this? Had he lain next to Kylo in this bed, smoking and tapping away at his datapad far after he’d clocked out, and planned all along for his descent onto the base to coincide with the cutting of this tie?

Kylo had planned to sleep here tonight surrounded by Hux’s things and to miss him, but the grief that welled up in his soul was hundreds of times bigger than what he’d prepared himself for. He sobbed into Hux’s sheets, big ugly sobs that filled the silence of the room. He’d chosen Hux’s side of the bed and it smelled like him.

Two days later Kylo got an alert from the Supreme Leader that he would be heading to Starkiller Base himself soon, so Hux’s respite would be a short one after all. Kylo had been crying a lot, so filled to the brim with loathsome feelings that they crept out of him day and night, and he felt like his eyes were full of sand. He hoped, when he called Snoke for direct orders, that Snoke could not see anything different about him through the glitching blue hologram.

Kylo tried to train in the gym and found that he was too sluggish and it only made him angrier, he tried to meditate and couldn’t sink into oblivion, and went for a stalk around the ship’s corridors. He ended up back in Hux’s quarters, where he’d made a habit of wallowing. And of smoking. It was the smoking that he blamed for what would occur on base. He’d never touched cigarra before, though he’d breathed more secondhand smoke than probably any other soul in the galaxy. Hux was fond of taking a drag and then pulling Kylo into smokey kisses. Kylo finished the pack of Naboo Blues, lighting them with a fingertip (his sole practice in the Force since receiving the note) because Hux had taken his lighter with him. After that pack was finished, Kylo destroyed the room looking for more. He found more half-finished packs stashed in the side table and kitchenette next to Hux’s decanter of Corellian brandy, and in the top right drawer of his desk. He started to work through them, too, smoking twenty a day easily. Giving Hux a run for his credits.

He found that the cigarra made his mind withdraw from his surroundings, producing a feeling of mild unreality. Kylo had thought that cigarra were supposed to make you feel sharper. Hux had always insisted that they made him concentrate better. They made Kylo feel dizzy. They muddled his connection to the Force much like alcohol did. He knew he should stop and avoid them for that reason alone, but now he preferred the dreamy and muted cast he lived under when he was tuned out of the Force, as if things were simply passing him by, unmoved by his will. He realized that was exactly what was happening: he found himself unable to influence or even to hear the officers around him, and soon unable to light cigarra with a snap of his fingers. Kylo resorted to holding them carefully to the lit blade of his saber. He couldn’t give up the taste of something he associated so closely with Hux, and he didn’t want to crawl back into full awareness. Not yet.

The night before Kylo was set to visit Starkiller Base, he received a calendar invite from Hux. It was an informal briefing, to take place in one of Starkiller’s cantinas. Likely a nicer one. Likely the nicest one, Kylo amended. Hux was the General. Hux had also copied an officer that Kylo didn’t know on the invitation, and that made Kylo’s brain burn in rage. Hux wouldn’t even face Kylo alone. He was bringing along some lackey or another to try and keep the conversation all business so that Kylo couldn’t say any of the things to him he wanted to. He didn’t know if it was better or worse than total avoidance.

 _But_. Kylo wanted very much to see Hux. He hadn’t seen his face since the morning before Hux left, and even then Kylo hadn’t really seen him. Hux habitually woke before he did, and had only extricated himself from Kylo’s grasp and ran a hand along the back of Kylo’s reaching one, tucking it back against his chest so that Hux was free to prepare for the day. They hadn’t even spoken. Just to see Hux again….

Noon. A lunch meeting. There was an option to accept or deny it, unusual for an invitation from Hux. It felt like a slap. Like Kylo didn’t matter. He accepted it, watching it populate in his calendar.

  
  


Starkiller Base was a realm of black and white. The only color in this place came from red First Order banners and red faces ducking through doors out of the razor-maw of the cold. Kylo paced outside in the snow, smoking furiously in the hours before the meeting, and arguing with himself.

_I want to see him._

“You have to be careful, for that reason. No mistakes.”

_I want to see if he’s done his hair the way I like best. Not too much of that sticky crap in it. I want to see how he looks. How he is._

“Don’t yell at him.”

_I’m not going to yell at him._

“Yeah, right. Don’t yell at the other one either. Batoo?”

_You’re more likely to flay the stooge than yell. At least you can’t choke him. Can’t even lift your saber up right now without your hands._

Kylo growled at himself, but didn’t drop the cigarra in his hand to stamp it out. He’d finish this one. Then, maybe…. Kylo walked past the cantina at 11:45 just to verify that it was where the invite said it was. Hux would be livid if he knew. Kylo second-guessing him had always driven him crazy, just as Hux drove Kylo crazy when the situation was reversed. And wasn’t that rich? Hux, of anyone, should have understood exactly how Kylo felt on the matter. Neither of them were capable of trusting the competence of others. Their mannerisms toward everyone and everything else turned into barbs between the two of them.

The cantina _was_ right where the invite indicated. The archway entrance was marked with aurebesh characters stating the block and room numbers and the universal symbols for food and drink. No swanky name. That wasn’t First Order style. Wide tinted windows allowed a muted view inside at tables and patrons and red fixtures in a gray room. Kylo walked on by and shoved out of the nearest exit for one last cigarra. His final pack was running low and he wondered for the first time how to procure more. Maybe he’d ask Hux. He laughed mirthlessly about that as he let smoke curl up from his lips into the frosty air. He turned around and walked back at 12:05, snapping his helmet back on over his snowflake-ridden hair. If it had been Hux alone, Kylo might have walked on in at 11:45 and waited for him, no matter how needy it looked. But with another officer attending, Kylo would be just as late as he usually was. That was what Hux deserved.

The walls of the cantina were hung with framed propaganda posters. The establishment was carpeted in red, black tables and chairs floating on a placid ruby lake. Little crystal fixtures pulled from Ilum’s soil glowed as centerpieces on each table. Kylo felt his face twist at the misuse of good kyber.

His mouth was going stale from his latest cigarra, and his brain was still freshly clouded from it. Even when this one started to wear off, Kylo thought that he would stay fogged up a while. He wasn’t sure if it was the nicotine or something less quantifiable than that, and so there was no knowing how long it would take for him to recover his complete abilities. Nevertheless, he knew immediately that there was something wrong with the maitre d’.

There wasn’t anything strange in the way the man gawked fearfully at Kylo Ren. His reputation preceded him, as ever. The young man was perhaps twenty and slim. Not as slim as Hux. His nametag read ‘Bolt’. He was weathered and unremarkable except that his uniform was rumpled. There was even a dark stain on the collar, unidentifiable on the black fabric. Several strands of his dishwater blond hair stuck up in back. Kylo was surprised that Hux had walked on by -- because Hux was certainly here, he was always fifteen minutes early -- without giving Bolt a reprimand or demanding that he go and change entirely before returning to his station. Even if the man was only a maitre d’, Hux took every transgression against Order regulation as a transgression against himself.

“Yes, my lord?” Bolt asked. His Imperial accent was ridiculous. Reedier and snootier than even the Old Empire crowd. Perhaps he was trying to make up for his young age and low station by sounding the part of an Imperial senator in a holodoc.

“General Hux,” Kylo barked at him through his vocoder.

Bolt paled and frowned. Kylo tried to reach out and connect with his mind but only succeeded in detecting faint anxiety from him, which was only natural when the two leaders of the First Order dined in your cantina and you looked like you’d slept in your kriffing uniform.

“Yes, sir,” Bolt said, and started toward the back of the cantina with Kylo’s menu in his hands. He looked back once to verify that Kylo was following, and Kylo sensed again that there was something wrong with the man, but Kylo had Hux to deal with and the maitre d’ of the officers’ cantina on Starkiller Base would just have to attend to his own problems, shoddy dress habits included. Kylo hated that he’d noticed at all. It was Hux in his brain. He’d never be able to tear it all out.

Hux had chosen a table at the very back of the cantina and a divider had been dragged out and placed in front of it for privacy. _Does he want to see me too? My face?_

Bolt and Kylo rounded the divider and Hux looked up and Kylo’s universe was reduced to Hux’s face. At first he saw nothing in Hux’s pale eyes -- sapped of their greenness in this environment -- but the sort of frozen politeness that Hux wore during his speeches. Then, just below it: anger. Concealed anger was nothing new from Hux, and Kylo could not detect any difference in it from the previous five years. The man next to Hux was fair-skinned with his hair shaved down so close to his skull that it was impossible to tell the color other than ‘light’. He had large eyes almost the same shade of blue as his colonel’s uniform. He stood to greet Kylo, putting out a hand.

“Colonel Datoo. It’s a pleasure to meet you, my lord.”

Kylo stared him down until he wilted, sitting back in his seat and putting his hand down. Hux made a small scoffing noise and shook his head. Kylo took his seat. The maitre d’ put his menu down in front of him and scurried away, leaving the three of them in relative seclusion. Kylo looked at Hux and marveled at how he could be so sad, and so angry at Hux, and yet still want him so bad. It made Kylo’s chest ache to look at him. He could never forget Hux’s face, not if he tried, but absence and the note made Kylo’s eyes keener now. He traced the shape of Hux’s lips. They had always fit so perfectly against his own. It was a strange sort of madness to see Hux now and know that he would never put hands on him again. Not gently, anyway.

Kylo reached out to Hux with his mind, having no more luck than he had with the maitre d’. It had been foolish to continue with the cigarra after he’d known he would see Hux again. He might miss something now. He got blurry hints of the anger he’d seen, and of fear. Fear? Hux had never been afraid of him.

“Ren.” Hux said pointedly.

Kylo withdrew, sure he was being chastised for attempted mind-reading, but that wasn’t it at all. Hux lifted a hand up and drew a quick circle in the air around his own face. So the divider _was_ for Kylo’s benefit. Kylo unclasped his helmet and set it on the table in front of the fourth and unoccupied chair. He knew his hair was damp with melted snow flurries and that his eyes were bloodshot, shadowed by dark circles beneath. There was no helping that, and he didn’t look any worse than he felt. He felt Datoo studying him with relish, filling in the gaps about the leader of the Knights of Ren. Datoo was inconsequential. Only here as a buffer. If Hux had been aboard the Finalizer he might have brought Mitaka. At least Mitaka would have been properly cowed to sit between Hux and Kylo Ren. Hux probably would have had to threaten him into attending. Datoo, who had never been in the presence of Hux and Kylo when they really got down to arguing, was far too excited to be included in this meeting of the Order’s finest.

“Was your voyage here pleasant, my lord?” Datoo asked, smiling politely.

Kylo grunted at him noncommittally without taking his eyes off Hux. If nothing else, this was an opportunity to look at Hux for an extended period of time. Kylo wasn’t sure he’d get this -- he’d languished (and taken his saber to Hux’s quarters) under the assumption that Hux would avoid contact with him. Kylo studied Hux’s hair, not slicked back straight to his skull but starting to come loose in exactly the way Kylo liked, as it did after Hux paced and ran his gloved fingers over it. Had Hux been just as nervous for this meeting? Had he smoked, too? Or was he out, did he regret leaving a pack of Naboo Blues to hold down his farewell letter? The dim light of the cantina did nothing for Hux’s complexion, stripping the warmth out of it and leaving him sallow. Only a week before Hux had been flushed and wanting, writhing under Kylo and wrapping his legs around Kylo’s ass to pull him in at a faster tempo, chanting expletives under his breath like a sacred invocation as Kylo fucked him open and wrung him out.

Hux had a glass of whiskey in front of him. Perhaps he’d started with two or three fingers, but now it was one. He took a drink. He looked somehow smarter and more beautiful now that he was off-limits to Kylo, as if he’d learned things in their scant days apart that Kylo would never know. “How goes your search, Ren?” He asked.

The search for Skywalker. It seemed distant. Kylo hadn’t followed any leads. He hadn’t done anything since Hux left, and it hung over him, poisoning his every thought. I can’t focus on Skywalker because _you left me_ , I haven’t meditated once since _you left me_ , I haven't slept at night after _you left me_. Kylo hated Hux for that, but not as much as he hated himself. “Fine,” Kylo lied. Then, “I’ve missed you.”

Hux’s eyes were sharp and displeased above the rim of his whiskey glass as he took another sip. Kylo felt surprise from Datoo, though the man’s exact thoughts were still hidden away, too far for him to hear. That was not the sort of thing co-commanders said to one another, and Hux did not dignify it with any sort of response, least of all _I’ve missed you too_.

“I’ve started smoking.” Kylo added.

“Did you? You shouldn’t.” Hux said in a politely dismissive tone, and that was enraging. As though Hux hadn’t personally polluted Kylo’s lungs with smoke these last five years. Hux went on, “We ought to get down to business. I did attach an agenda—”

Kylo interrupted him. “I want to try again. Is there any chance?”

The look of absolute horror on Hux’s face might have been delicious in any other circumstance. Datoo shifted in his seat uncomfortably, quickly learning what the crew of the Finalizer already knew through hazardous proximity: there was much more between General Hux and Kylo Ren than there was meant to be.

“Ren,” Hux warned. “My decision is final.” His face was reddening with more than embarrassment. There was fury there too, probably because bringing the colonel had backfired. _Isn’t that just too bad?_

“Why?” Kylo challenged him, mirroring Hux’s anger just as he always had. They bounced it back and forth between themselves until something exploded. That’s how it had always been. Datoo looked like he was considering scooting his chair backward out of the line of fire.

“Don’t pretend you don’t know,” Hux snapped. But Kylo really, really didn’t. His face must have shown it. His expressions always gave him away — part of the reason for the helmet. “Typical.” Hux muttered. His whiskey glass trembled in his hand and Kylo thought about how he had spilled the blue milk.

“Sirs, if you would rather—” Datoo was beginning to rise from his chair. Smart man.

“Leave,” Kylo nodded, at the same instant Hux said:

“Stay.”

Datoo froze, head whipping between them, and then sank back down. Hux was his direct commander.

Kylo took a deep breath and released it. “I just want to know—”

“What you want to know has nothing to do with why we’re here.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“No. It’s crucial that you understand the workings of Starkiller Base, in the event that I am neutralized. Datoo is second in command here, and—” Hux was tapping at his datapad lain flat on the table, bringing up a schematic or list. Maybe the agenda that Kylo hadn’t read.

“We could try counseling.”

“Oh hells,” Hux abandoned his datapad to put his face in his hands. Then his shoulders trembled. He was laughing, Kylo realized. Or something between laughing and crying. Kylo tried for a thought and managed to grasp the tail-end of one — _bloody hell he’d cut the counselor in two_ — then it slipped away leaving him with a burgeoning headache for his efforts. He almost pitied the rebels he’d interrogated over the years. Hux put his hands back down on the table and squeezed them tight. If he weren’t wearing gloves he’d be digging his nails into his palms, Kylo knew. Hux met his eyes and said slowly and evenly, “One more word that is not pertinent to Starkiller Base, and this meeting is over.”

“And we haven’t even heard the specials,” Datoo murmured, looking like he would not mind leaving early at all. He had prime gossip to spread.

“You think you can just walk out on me without a conversation?” Kylo growled at Hux, leaning forward. _That you can just walk out on five years and not even say why?_

“Do you think you’re in this alone?” Hux hissed back, leaning forward as well, the last of his polite veneer cracking. Anger, fear, and _pain_. That was dizzying. Why…?

Datoo picked up his menu to study it, and then Hux followed suit, using his as a shield. The cantina might smell wonderful. Kylo wouldn’t know. The chain-smoking he’d indulged in lately had blunted that sense too.

“Hux, look at me,” Kylo said.

Hux put the menu down specifically to glare at Kylo, but before either of them could get another word out there was a commotion.

It was the maître d’. He was running toward the back of the cantina with an arm bent behind him in a strange parade rest stance and he was yelling. The words seemed gibberish to Kylo. The cantina fell silent, stunned officers looking up from their meals and conversations to watch this anomaly. Kylo turned around in his seat and leaned beyond the divider to stare at him, feeling almost hypnotized by those hairs that Bolt hadn’t slicked down. They bounced now as the man sprinted.

Datoo’s chair scraped back as Bolt approached, and if Datoo hadn’t moved first perhaps Kylo and Hux wouldn’t have either, as keyed up as they both were.

“What is the meaning of this?” Datoo asked, and Bolt brought his hand out from behind his back. Clenched in it so tightly that the man’s hand was a white and bony claw was the biggest kitchen knife Kylo had ever seen. It must be a foot and half long, and wickedly pointed, gleaming even in the lowlight of the cantina.

Someone screamed. Bolt swung the knife through the air, and it made a whispering sound and then a sickening dull thwack as it was buried in Datoo’s chest. Bolt pulled it free and swung again. Datoo scrambled back, his hands coming up to claw at the spreading bruise of a stain on his blue uniform, and the next swing gouged a deep line along the side of his skull, knocking his hat to the floor. If Bolt had been only a bit more steady in his aim, he’d have buried the knife into Datoo’s head and killed him. Blood sprayed out of that wound, not held in by clothing, and Kylo saw very clearly that one red droplet fell into his water glass and sank down, trailing pink behind it like a huge bloody sperm.

Other people were screaming now at the sight of blood. Datoo’s head wound was spitting profusely. He clapped a hand to it and the blood coursed between and over his fingers, pattering down to the floor like reactor coolant from a leaking pipe. People got up, fleeing. Tables overturned. A woman shrieked, “Matt, don’t leave me!” Whoever Matt’s date was would soon be writing him a note, Kylo thought.

“Kylo?” Hux asked. He’d stood up from his chair too.

 _He never calls me that outside of bed_.

Bolt shoved Datoo at Hux and Hux caught the man automatically. He nearly fell backward over the chair he’d just risen from. Datoo’s wounds gushed onto Hux, too, staining his uniform darker. On the black fabric, it was impossible to tell what it was. Bolt wasn’t done. He went for Hux next, screaming.

Kylo tackled him. Unwise, when your opponent has a knife. Kylo got up under Bolt’s armpit and forced his arm up, hoping that would be enough to stop Bolt from stabbing him. At least momentarily, it was. Kylo slammed him into the wall and let him drop onto a table. The little crystal fixture couldn’t feel nice on his back. He went for his saber, but then Hux’s voice called him away. Hux was the only thing that was real in the cigarra-fog.

“Kylo, help me.”

Kylo turned back — Hux was struggling to keep both himself and Datoo upright. Kylo helped Hux lower Datoo to the floor and lean him against the wall, and then Bolt started to stir.

“You didn’t _kill_ him?” Hux asked, aghast.

Bolt’s eyes locked on Hux with murderous intent, and Kylo couldn’t do anything to him with the Force. This place was too open — Bolt might get around his saber and go for Hux. They needed to leave. Kylo grabbed Hux and yanked him to his feet, pulling him off balance. Hux fell clumsily into Kylo’s arms, and Kylo squeezed him tight on instinct, feeling Hux’s thin frame against his own.

“ _You fascist scum_ ,” Bolt snarled, twisting to roll off the table and back to his feet.

“Ren _what the fuck_ are you doing,” Hux said. He said it, not bothering to tilt the end up in a question. He wasn’t wearing his blaster. Most officers didn't, to the cantina. Hux likely had a vibroblade, but Bolt had a knife too.

The front door was no good — it was a wide space, and still full of thronging people trying to escape this mayhem. There were the bathrooms, but in the event the situation got worse that would leave them with no exit. Kylo wasn’t too egotistical to admit he wasn’t at peak performance right now. The kitchen, then. Kylo ran, pulling Hux along with him, and together they shoved through to a world of white tile and strong fluorescent light. Here Kylo could smell food — not the simple rations of troopers and petty officers but pastry and some sort of fish. Kylo had a guess at the special. He’d have to tell Datoo if the man lived.

A waiter narrowly missed colliding with them, whisking his stacked tray out of their path just in time and gaping at them with his mouth open in a wide ‘O’.

Kylo shoved blindly past the similarly disgruntled chefs toward the back of the kitchen, where surely there was an exit, dragging Hux along tucked under one arm. Hux’s boots skidded on the floor. The door they’d just come through burst open again and Bolt appeared, the back of his hair still sticking up and his uniform rumpled and stained at the collar with what Kylo was now sure was blood. Someone else’s blood. It hadn’t been his uniform. This was a clumsy assassination attempt. How lucky for Bolt that Kylo Ren had decided to smoke away his broken heart, and couldn’t simply hoist him up to the ceiling and break his neck at five meters. Bolt ran after Kylo and Hux, brandishing the knife he’d evidently stolen from one of the chefs earlier in lieu of trying to sneak his own weapon onto the base. They didn’t seem to have noticed it’s disappearance before now -- the nearest one looked at Bolt almost blankly until he saw the bloody knife, and by then it was too late for him. Bolt brought it down and there was another horrible thwack, and then the chef screamed. This was followed by a thick wet splat — something bloody but sickeningly more than blood hit the white tiled floor.

Kylo and Hux rushed down the narrow aisle at the back of the kitchen toward the steel door there. It was locked with two bolts. Kylo reached up to undo the first one and then heard another scream-thwack and then Bolt’s footsteps fast approaching. The second chef hadn’t slowed him down much.

Kylo pushed Hux against the door and then stepped in front of him in a protective stance and drew his saber. It crackled to life and lit up the hallway red.

Bolt slowed and stopped, breathing hard. His dirty blond hair looked brown in this new light, his skin red and his eyes pitch black. Kylo wondered how he’d ever thought this was a First Order man. It was Hux’s fault for distracting him. Then again, Hux must have been distracted too. Bolt started to bounce on his heels like a boxer, feinting with the knife, undeterred even by a lightsaber.

 _He’s insane_ , Hux thought behind Kylo. It was a rather loud thought, but hearing it still made Kylo feel more grounded.

“I’ll kill you,” Bolt said, his eyes fixed on Hux’s face visible behind Kylo’s. “It’d be done already if you hadn’t brought your pet Sith. I’ll kill you like you killed them!”

“You’ll have to be more specific.” Hux deadpanned, and Bolt bared his teeth like he’d like to bury them in Hux.

“Undo the bolts,” Kylo said to Hux. If he could just get Hux out of here, then he could cut Bolt into little charred ribbons without _worrying_.

“I can’t, you’re crushing me,” Hux hissed. That was true. Kylo could feel him struggling to move, pinned between Kylo’s back and the door. Kylo shuffled forward to give him a little room, and Bolt made another elaborate feint that Kylo didn’t bother to follow with his saber blade.

Kylo heard the first bolt go, and then the second one. Bolt charged and Kylo readied himself to meet the blow, and then something hard slammed into his ass from behind. Hux’s bootheel, Kylo realized as he stumbled forward. Bolt’s knife grazed over his forearm, barely breaking the skin. Kylo twisted his saber and bisected the man, driving the crackling point of the blade into the wall and leaving a glowing orange mark.

The door was open, Hux already slipped through. Kylo followed, the depth of what Hux had done dawning on him. Hux wanted him to get killed. Maybe he’d engineered the whole thing, found himself a crazy maitre d’ bent on revenge… no, shock was rolling off Hux in stale waves. He hadn’t run off far, and stood panting. They were in another hallway, this one sane. Deserted but unbloodied. Kylo put a hand on Hux’s shoulder to walk him forward, and Hux ducked out from under it and slapped it away.

“Don’t you fucking touch me.” Hux turned and started walking. Maybe he knew where he was going, but Kylo thought not. Hux only wanted to get away from him. He jogged up next to Hux and grabbed his arm again. “Leave me alone.”

“You kicked my ass in there. You kicked me and almost got me stabbed. Both of us, killed.” Kylo said. “I can’t believe you, Hux.”

Hux turned and glared up their scant height difference with a smirk. “I’ve wanted to kick your ass for the past five years. The timing wasn’t perfect, but we can’t always choose that, can w—”

Kylo slapped him. Hux’s head jerked to the side, his eyes wide in shock and pain. His gloved hand went to his cheek.

“I saved your life,” Kylo told him. “Does that not compute? I saved your _fucking life_ back there.”

“You son of a bitch,” Hux said, and Kylo was surprised to see tears slipping down his face. “If you ever touch me again I’ll scratch your eyes out.” His expression changed then, becoming something terrible. “I had lovers.”

It was a lie. Kylo’s connection to the Force had returned enough from adrenaline or plain old time for him to be sure it was a lie, but even if he couldn’t brush up against Hux’s mind the lie was written all over his face. He was only saying it to hurt Kylo. It worked. Kylo’s hands wanted to lock themselves around Hux’s throat and squeeze, so Kylo put them in his armpits.

“Hux, why?” Kylo said, trying to keep his voice low and soft.

“You’re shit at it so I found men who weren’t,” Hux spat. It wasn’t what Kylo had asked and they both knew it.

“You won’t drive me off with a fantasy,” Kylo told him. “I know you still want me.” He hadn’t been sure before he said it, but now that the words were out he felt the unwilling confirmation from Hux. Hux did still want him, and not just as a bedwarmer. He wanted Kylo quietly working on calligraphy at his desk when he was laid up in bed with a headache. He wanted Kylo when he was working on reports after hours and when he was showering off the day’s grime in the refresher and when he sat up late in bed with a cigarra between his lips and a holonovel on his datapad. He even missed when Kylo would ask too many pesky questions about what he was reading.

“This is for the best,” Hux said, echoing the scarce words he’d written out. There was truth in that, even if Hux only thought there was. “I should have known nothing would ever be easy with you. Stars, Ren, look at us. We’re a walking catastrophe together.”

“I’m worse apart,” Kylo said simply. “You are too. You missed the most obvious spy I’ve ever seen.”

Hux sputtered indignantly, eventually landing on, “So did _you!_ ”

“That’s exactly _my point_ ,” Kylo shouted at him. “So you agree with me.”

“I most certainly do _not_ \--”

Kylo kissed him. He backed Hux into the wall and then hoisted him up and held him there, pinned between durasteel and Kylo’s body for the second time in quick succession. Kissing turned into being kissed -- Hux reacted like Kylo had lit up all of his nerves at once, his whole body shaking minutely, and he kissed Kylo as if his life depended on it, licking into his mouth and holding onto his head with both gloved hands. Kylo was the first to pull away for air, and that had never happened before. It felt like an endcap for the nightmare -- Hux started it with the paper note and Kylo closed it off with the first restraint he’d ever shown in his life.

“We’re in public,” Kylo said. It was Hux’s line.

“Yes. You’re right, put me down.” Hux’s face was flushed in a decidedly pleasant way now, his eyes very green in the lights of the corridor. His lips were kiss-swollen.

Kylo did, but he put an arm to the wall over Hux’s shoulder, boxing him in still. “Can we talk?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Hux--”

“I need a fresh uniform. Accompany me.” There was that flash of pain again in Hux’s mind, this time swirled together with something warm. Heat pulsed in Kylo’s chest at that, then sank lower and settled below his navel at Hux’s words. But they had unfinished business.

“Tell me how to fix this.”

“You can’t. Neither of us can.”

“If you ever try to leave me again I’ll choke you to death.”

Hux blushed like a maid in a holoromance and shoved at Kylo’s chest until Kylo stood up straight. Hux walked away, in the right direction this time, and Kylo followed. He’d left his helmet on the table. No matter, he’d have it brought to him later. This took precedence.

Hux cleared his calendar and dragged Kylo into the shower with him before he let Kylo touch him again. Kylo set to marking Hux’s chest and neck -- carefully below where the collar of his uniform would be, Kylo knew the location by heart -- with dark purple bruises. Hux scratched Kylo’s back open with his blunt nails, digging them in as Kylo fucked him down into his sheets and howling like a lothcat. Hux's mind roiled with shame at his own lack of will and was lit up by electric flashes of pleasure and power. It had been Kylo’s final threat, more than any offer of compromise, that had cemented Hux’s decision to take him back. Hux got a high greater than any cigarra could give from knowing that Kylo could end him at any moment, and _wouldn’t_. Not as long as they had this.

The exact shape of his motivations in leaving, Hux kept buried. Kylo thought it was a misplaced sense of duty, knowing Hux, and oh wasn’t that just as powerful a high for Kylo? He’d never smoke again. It could never compare to turning Hux around in circles until he reached for Kylo over the First Order. Kylo came at the thought, burying himself deep and moaning against Hux’s chest. Hux coaxed him up for another kiss as he stroked himself to completion with Kylo softening inside. The clench of his body and the choked grunt that issued from Hux’s lips made another vague wave of arousal crash over Kylo though he was already spent.

“Off, you brute,” Hux muttered, and Kylo slid away to the side, breathing hard.

“So, we’re….” Kylo paused, skipping over the word again just as he did in his own head. They’d never decided on one.

“Yes, yes,” Hux waved him off dismissively and gave him a frosty spare-me look.

Kylo pulled Hux in, ignoring his weak objections about sweat and reclaiming at least part of the day, and snuggled in to sleep. Hux owed him that.

**Author's Note:**

> I purposefully left the exact reason for Hux's melodrama unknown to Kylo because these two are not the type to Figure Things Out productively, but if you don't like that then take your pick:  
> 1) All of Snoke's ramblings about Kylo needing to cast off his personal ties didn't get to Kylo but did get to Hux, so Hux is trying to be the bigger man for the sake of Order.  
> 2) Hux was worried that the completion of Starkiller would make him monstrous even to Kylo and was selfishly trying to get ahead of it and do the leaving himself before he could be rejected by yet another person in his life.  
> 3) Kylo forgot Hux's birthday.


End file.
